Frustrating! That's the appropriate word for what is happening in the wake of the Osama bin Laden raid. Besides the precision of the Navy SEALs, the big story to emerge from the action is that coerced interrogation gave the CIA vital information used to track bin Laden to his lair. Current CIA Chief Leon Panetta has confirmed that.

Of course, that exposition is embarrassing to the left, including President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton, who are all on record as saying coerced interrogation does not work. Apparently, they were wrong in a big way.

The nails-on-the-blackboard part of this story is that some liberal pundits are trying to deny the undeniable. The spin they are using is that a "mosaic" of intelligence led the CIA to bin Laden. It was not just waterboarding or whatever. To paraphrase Panetta: We'll never know if we could have gotten the same intel without the water.

That's true, but who cares? It is the duty of the federal government to protect Americans from harm. And that's what the Bush administration did when it signed off on coercive questioning.

The record shows that just three men were waterboarded: Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Rahim al-Nashiri, all al-Qaida big shots. Under duress, KSM gave up vital information that crippled his terror group and ultimately led U.S. authorities to watch bin Laden's top Pakistani courier. Eventually, that man led the CIA to the compound outside Islamabad.

But still, the far left won't budge. No matter what the facts are about the effectiveness of coerced interrogation, they will deny them. Infuriating.

The sane policy going forward is this: The president and only the president should have the power to order coerced interrogation, including waterboarding, if national security is endangered or American lives are on the line. One man makes the decision, and his orders are carried out by an elite intelligence team answerable directly to him.

So if Obama doesn't want to order waterboarding, fine. That's on him. But the elected leader of the nation should have the power to make the decision.

It is ironic that many on the far left openly celebrated the death of bin Laden. So, guys, let me get this straight: It's OK for U.S. forces to shoot a terrorist in the head, but it's not OK to waterboard him if lives are in danger? Good grief.

It is long past time for Americans to reject ideology that endangers human beings. We live in a dangerous world chock full of doomsday weapons. Common sense should dictate how the federal government defines strategies to protect us. How many times have you heard ideologues say that coerced interrogation does not work?

Yes, McCain. I’ve wondered about that over the years. It finally occurred to me that this whole campaign against “enhanced interrogation” is a kind of counter-intelligence, maybe the purest form of counter-intelligence. It’s counter-intuitive, and it’s designed for consumption by the enemy. The only problem with such propaganda (i.e. “torture doesn’t work”) is that it’s getting consumed by some of “our own” who haven’t quite grasped the point.

Thanks for posting; however, O'Reilly's heading, "Truth vs. Ideology," is an issues-oriented argument, centered around the exposure of just one tiny crack in the armor of the so-called "progressives'" claim to a "higher ground" for American policy. As such, it misses a larger exposure of the shifting sands upon which the Administration's positions on a whole host of policies are built.

What America needs now is a principles-oriented debate about "who we are," which seems to be the Administration's tag line in defense of its actions, and an honest argument based on the firm foundation provided by our Declaration of Independence and the resulting Constitution's limits on government power.

"Chickadee," in Post 3, points out that "this isn't a topic that can be debated with the left. . . because they will always look 'moral' defending it." Might we add that there are few issues (topics) which can be "debated" with the left successfully, for the "ideology" of the "progressives" is based on counterfeit ideas gleaned from their "favorite philosophers"--Mao, Marx, Lenin, Keynes, et al--not on essential principles of liberty, as understood, declared, and implemented by America's founding generation.

For instance, the so-called "progressives'" claim of higher ground in arguing for redistribution of wealth sounds moral and good, but it overlooks historical evidence, facts, and the unintended consequences of such a policy in every country where it has been tried.

Debating the "issue" of "taxing the rich" to "help" the poor generally is a losing argument for conservatives, because they don't (or can't) articulate and defend the underlying principle and historical facts.

Yet, those who profess to be "conservatives" continue to waste their energies arguing on issues, with the exact result Chicadee describes, because they cite trite phrases like "limited government," "cutting taxes," "cutting spending," and other meaningless terms they have memorized. As a result, they come off appearing to be selfish and uncaring, lacking the "moral" high ground.

To win such debates in the minds of voters, there must be a rediscovery of and passion for the underlying principles of America's founding documents, as explained in the writings of America's founding generation, the Federalist Papers, and speeches of the period.

Those documents speak of liberty as the prize above all others.

Before the counterfeit ideas of Mao and Marx have completely turned off the light of liberty in America, some brave men and women must immerse themselves in the principles which changed the world in 1776 and 1787 and resulted in millions of our ancestors fleeing nations which practiced the tyrannical ideas of government-over-people the progressives now cherish.

Such a debate would force the pretenders to defend their bankrupt ideas, thus exposing their real agenda--coercive power and control.

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